South Florida Revival
Yesterday I went to my first class at South Flordia Revival, and it was wildly interesting. I have to be enrolled in a school in order to get a scholarship to goto Israel this March with an organization called “Passages”. I’ll be making a movie there on why Israel should matter to Christians in America. More on that later.
So I enrolled in this college and I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was a Christian school that my friends, whom I met through the non-profit Elev8Life, parents host/teach. They call themselves revivalist. They teach with a program from Bethel Church out in Cali, that i’ve been hearing a lot about this year through many different people. Nothings a coincidence I guess.
What they do is pray for God to show them a person. Their clothes, hair color, afflictions/what they need prayer for, where they are located, ECT and then they go on a “treasure hunt” for these people. They find people that match a few things on this list, go up to them and ask if they can pray over them. They pray over them and tell them what God thinks of them, giving them words of life. Telling them Jesus loves them and they are worthy of this love. I filmed people serving in this way many years ago, and it made me uncomfortable. I thought it was a dumb way to “evangelize”, because who they heck is going to be lead to Jesus this way? Its too abrasive and not a good way to lead people to Christ… Until I tried it for myself.
We had a group of about 30-40 of us and we all split up into smaller groups of 4. We shared the descriptions God placed on our hearts and even though we were in-land, God made it clear we need to goto the beach. Our group of 4 goes to the beach and we started looking for colors on our list, we had purple and yellow, we saw a bar with purple and yellow logo and “bar” was on our list also, so we stopped. We were about 2 blocks from the beach, but we got out anyway. We walk up and theres nobody really walking around or even there. We continue walking and in the parking lot is a sign that says “Beach Suites and Hotel”. One of the people in our group, Rylee, has “sweet” written on her list. It didn’t really make since until we saw the sign for “beach SUITES”. We see two employees sitting and having a little break on their phone next to the sign. Lets go pray over them, why not? We walk up and strike up a convo and these guys say they are Christians. We pray over them and it really did seem to lift their spirits and give them hope and encouragement. Our first prayer to strangers was a success! They didn’t seem turned off at ALL and one guy even told us he knows there is a God, but doesn’t really know Jesus. He said a few months ago, in Hati, 4 people came up to him and said the SAME things we prayed for him and this blew his mind. He said he will look into this Jesus thing some more.
We prayed over about 8-10 people total, but the one that made the most impact on me was this girl with pink hair. I had “pink hat”, another guy in the group had “pink hair”, so of course when we saw her outside of a bar we went up to pray over her. She only spoke Spanish, luckily we had a couple people in the group who spoke Spanish too. I didn’t understand a single word that was spoken, but I felt what was happening. This girl loved hearing these words spoken over her. It really moved and impacted her to tears. She told us that she was very depressed yesterday, and today 3 other people came and prayed over her! She felt like God really hears her and wanted to encourage her. The energy of the whole situation was so overwhelmingly positive that I didn’t need to understand the words.
We get back to share what we experienced with the entire group and the most impactful story I heard that night was from somebody who’s been doing this every Saturday for YEARS. She said that she went to pray over this woman who, after the fact, told her she was literally on her way to commit suicide. She showed the needles in her bag and said she was walking home to go overdose. She was going to do it earlier that day, but in a moment of despair prayed to God saying “if you are real, you need to show yourself today”. She belived that us being there to seek her out specifically was really God speaking through us. That He spoke to us to go find HER. This gave her hope and she told the group she wants to continue to live. THIS BLEW ME AWAY. We really can be a vessel for God and He can work through us to make an impact on other people. Sometimes it can be life or death.
My take away from this incredible experience was positive. Hard and not very “fun”, but nobody turned us down when we asked to pray over them. People want this. I would go as far to say people NEED THIS. God works in amazing ways and I am humbled and honored to serve my Lord Yahweh, father of Jesus Christ. When I open myself up to receive His word, His command, I feel alive. I feel like i’m making a difference in peoples lives beyond making money or a transaction. Life is more than grinding to get that next paycheck so I can save up for this thing. It’s about working for the benefit of other people.
How would you react if a stranger walked up to you, said Jesus told them to come pray over YOU specifically, then spoke words of life over you ending it with “you are loved and worthy”? Would you feel weirded out? Maybe so. Would it be uplifting? Definitely. My prayer is that I can plant seeds that have the power to grow into a mighty fruit. That somebody who doesn’t know Jesus will be impacted by this experience enough to seek His face. Or somebody who does know Him be reminded of His amazing grace and love. You never know the impact of your words so why not have them be words from our Lord? Why not have them be words of love? I have it on my heart to continue this practice outside of “class”. You can call it homework, or extra credit, but I call it a new lifestyle.
